There are many factors involved, but I’ve been blogging for pay for long enough, and for a wide enough variety of people, that I can predict fairly accurately how long things will take. That allows me to give clients a useful estimate, and to promise I won’t charge more even if it takes me longer than I predicted.

A well-crafted, thoroughly researched post that will rank high for their keywords and bring in traffic for months to come? That’s two hours. A quick post to decorate a couple of links that are the real point of the thing? Fifteen minutes. I can also edit really cheap bloggers’ posts at a rate of about 10 per hour, and some clients prefer that arrangement as an economical way to get well-written posts.

In all those cases, using an hourly rate instead of a per-blog rate lets me and the client feel comfortable.

I used to do a monthly rate and work it out so that I earned the hourly rate I wanted, but that can lead to dissatisfaction — on my part or on the client’s.

With that said, there are people who want good work at an unrealistically low rate. I don’t think we should encourage them. If professional content providers will insist on being paid a professional rate, we won’t have to consider working for $5.00 an hour — unless that’s a good wage where we happen to live.